Wednesday, November 12, 2025

Foucault: March 21, 1973 Lecture (Punitive Society)


The group began with questions: 

(1) p. 206: Is Foucault making a distinction between relays/multiples of power as opposed to productive power/powers that serve a specific function?
(2) p. 212: What is the second "function" of sequestration that Foucault mentions?
(3) p. 214: Double system of prevention of heterosexuality and prohibition of homosexuality?  
(4) p. 206-207: What is meant by hyper-power?

Discussion...

On Hyper-power: 
—Intensification of power on bodies
—Does hyper-power mean more power?
—Social bodies: power is predicated on membership; mechanical bodies: on productive function; dynastic: ?

—Is the prison the site of hyper-power? Site of multiplication (places where mechanisms of power, normalization, the examination, occur and then become diffuse through the social body). 

—State structure is a relay-multiplier of power "within a society in which the State structure remains the conditions for the functioning of these institutions" (209)?

On "Mono-functional institutions" (p. 212):

—Institutions appear to be mono-functional, but that is not the case. 
—Second function is to fabricate the social—"fabricate something that is both prohibition and norm, and that has to become reality: they are institutions of normalization" (214-215). 
—At first sight not implied in the institutional function itself 
—Establishes whole set of norms that exceed institution's stated/explicit functions. 

—Function in Foucault vs. Althusser/Marx

Prevention of heterosexuality vs. prohibition of homosexuality (p. 213-214): 

—Structure of a sex-segregated school system means that heterosexuality as a practice is prevented (cannot be exercised); it just is prevented but not on some moral ground; just a structural feature. 
—Homosexuality needs to be prohibited 
—Heterosexuality is the external norm that is diffused; homosexuality is internal 

—p. 214: is apparatus in footnote apparatus or dispositif  in French translation. 

New type of discursivity (p. 215) 

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